Valentines Day

Once, when I was going to college somebody had grafittied and flypostered a Valentine's message on about 7 walls, all leading up to the uni. It was along the lines of "It's valentines day... guess who your secret admirer is" and I thought it was quite cool (I'm easily impressed) and a bit of me wanted it to be for me (allthough I knew from word go that the guy I was seeing at the time was far too self absorbed to bother with anything like that!)
So now I want to write a story about it. Perhaps make it so The message "follows" my protagonist all the way to work and she/he knows it's not for them but a bit of them convinces themselves and perhaps also the reader that it could be... but obviously its not and its all fantasy vs reality and things. Like wishful thinking vs cynicism or somehting.
Anyway, it's better than the weird "run away to Norwich" fantasys I've been having! I mean Norwich! I'm allergic to that city!

Life Fucking Sux

Major balls.
I'm just really disgruntled. Always feel tired these days, I'm always skint and I'm always bad tempered! How lame is that? well it does get to my bad side and really pisses me off a lot. I really feel that I need achange of scenery or something, a holiday, a rest... just a change... It would help refresh me and set me off writng again.
But sometimes I think perhaps I need some type of structure around the writing and then the rest of my life can kinda fall into place. I dunno, I just feel all wishy-washy about everything at the mo and thats really not me! I'm all "I know what I want, I know where I'm going" rahrahrah, but now I feel a bit like I just really dont care about anything... I'm becomeing niahilistic in my old age! Not in a cool punk way, more in a really tragic way. I should become a skaghead then at least my life would have a purpse! get up, get money to score, score, get money to score, score.... at least you know where you are! Writing is worse cos its like get an idea, flounk it, get annoter idea, give it a go bt its still shit, get annother idea, write it, its good, you still feel its shit....
rarh!

Grants for the Arts

I spent all of last night doing the form and I really think that they do give out money... they just make the forms really hard and difficult to understand so they can bin them whenever they come through the postbox.
How Shit.
Anyway, I need to add a peice of prose about 1000 - 2000 words long and a scene from a play.
Any thoughts on what fodder to give them? no point in adding toyland BTW cos thy have a link to it in the proposal.

muha! I feel like writing!

muhamuhamuha!
I actually feel like writing something! I feel like going back to Crackheads and Yardies and writing about Alphonso's misus!
Ha!
Its like the old me is back!
I got the inspiration from a Chuck Plahunic Novel! Its really odd cos I suspect that my desire of not writing also stemmed from a Chuck Palahunic novel... inadiquate feelings and all that!
hehe!

How to beat Writers Block

I have a fathamable idea of how to beat writers block.
I need to lock myself in my room with terrible music playing and JUST FUCKING DO MY THING!
In the words of Kirsten Pfaff, I need to be happy and sane and just remove myself...
I have no money at the moment... so I don't have the temptation to go out and drink (which is good).
I have to just ignore my friends (again... Apologies to Ang, Lucy and Charisse)
I need to ignore the charms of the net (sorry peeps... Lucy, Stacey, Alex's... Charisse Again!)
I have to ignore Lee (not that hard actually!)
I need to begin working on projects that I have started and not finished... so that would be:
-Stolen Story
-Mermaids and Drowning Women
-The Novel
-Sing,Sing
-The New story
I need to give everyting Ladyfest related to Charisse.
When having breaks I should be doing my Grants for the Arts Application.
I need to stop doing things like cleaning the underside of the sofa as procastinating
I need to chuck the TV out the window (Perhaps take a leaf out of somebody I know's book - he put a hammer through his!)

-

I have written nothing

Believe it or not I have reached the wonderful thing knows as writers block! IE: I have not got a new idea and feel totally drained and intimidated by my fucking laptop for the first time in months ! It pisses me off.
I've been doing otherLit developement stuff and really... in real time, I haven't really had an idea for a few days and if I had anything to write about It would feel like my head was about to explode. Ususally, I have an idea once every 2-3 days. I haven't had an idea for a week and I'm getting scared...
Any ideas out there for inspiration excercises?
The only problem is I kinda feel that those excercises are futile and false... I'm not being pedantic or snobby or anything... it's just if an idea that dont really "grab" me... well... I don't really care that much about it! And thereofre can't write about it!

Ladyfest Leicester 2007

Right, Most of you know about this but here is an explanation for those of you who dont.
Charisse (poopy47000) and I were approached earlier this month to be the litarary co-ordinators of Ladyfest Leicester 2007. The aim of Ladyfest, is its a festival to promote awareness of womens issues within arena's that are mostly male dominated (therefore it often gets lots of female rock bands). In previous Ladyfests the Litrature side of things have been pretty terrible - simpl because Ladyfests put so much atetntion on music, they often dont actually get any artists or writers to contribute and the Lit bit gets shove on the backburner.
Well, Stacey (person who is organising the most of the festival, owns her own record label and has organised Ladyfests all over the country) has pretty much left the organisation of the entire event to Charisse and I. We are focusing on poetry (shudder) performance poetry, readings and spoken word, MC's and extracts from plays. We will be running an open submissions for everyone to send us their stuff, but there are a efw conditions.
1. solo male writers will not be able to sumbit (sorry - not my rules - perhaps will do a Mrfest at some point) but will be able to co-write with female (NB: I have a meeting about Ladyfest Today and I WILL be contesting this point - I am very unhappy about it)
2. Female protagonists pleses
3. due to the feminis nature of this event, work that has a feminist poetic about it will be favoured
(I feel like saying that anybody who is liked by Momentum please not apply - their stuff is defo NOT the type of thing we are looking for! - but I didnt really say that, did i?)
Anyway, everyone who I cn possibly think of I will contact with a full set of submission guidelines when Charisse and I have finalised them. I may set up annother email account simply for Ladyfest 07.
Oh, some more details, It is going to be held in Quebec but I havent got the exact date as yet.
And we have a team of 2 Techies to (perhaps) do most of the stuff.
So if you think you have teh stuff for this venture then please take a look at it, also tell people you think may be intrested in any way - to come see it, to submit or to help in anyway
here is the myspace for the overall festival
http://www.myspace.com/ladyfestleicester07

PS: These pics are logos that were used in Ladyfest's from around the world. I can't upload the Ladyfest Leicester logo, 'cos I can't seem to get on with MySpace!

annother acceptance

I got annother acceptance at
www.drunkenpoets.com

The Story is called "Rose White, Rose Red" and has many themes running through it... most notiably female competition for male affections, but in a futile way.

you cant rape the willing

As a kind of extention from the Gypsy Rose thing, I wanted to write a short story about a girl who works in an upmarket strip joint that tries to masqurade as a burlesque house.
I'm more intrested in the use of language and might try to rip off (intertextualise) something by Chuck Palahunic... short sentences, really hard hitting points, lists, deconstructed form... that type of thing, but ill just do my own thing in the end!
I found this on Wikipdeia
"In literary criticism, burlesque is often used as a generic term to describe any imitative work that derives humor from an incongruous contrast between style and subject. " Perhaps I should really ponder and absorb some of these quotes...
perhaps not!

the stolen story

the 2 out of work actors and the playwrite should all me male and one of them seems useless with girls and gets together with the male playwrite as a kind of "surprise" ending.
Its great writing this as I suddenly have a vocal poin for my animosity and real efeelings about theatre!
trouble is, I Love writing plays... just hate all the bullshit that goes with it!
I need to stop being so fucking miserable and write what they want me to. I need to seem intrested in what people are saying really when I am not. I need to stop innatly hating "loviee" type actors and smile more.
Man! if I do all that I'll end up dead in a bath with my wrists cut one of these days!
Perhaps I'll just cary on doing what I'm doing and hope that the tide will change and Sarah Kane style shocking drama will become more popular again...
Royal Court here I Come!

Sing Sing Death House 2

So, I reconed that I should even the whole play out into 2 acts / 4 scenes a peice which leaves me one scene down. I wrote a new scene last night when everyone else was watching Lost and it's mostly between Christina and James (Dan appears at the end - pissed) and it fuses their private and public worlds. Christina and James have just gone to her father's funeral and Dan didn't show up - he was out getting drunk and being all sentimental about the whole affair. It highlights James's removal from society and from the siblings - and also how deep down he's quite a nice bloke.

Gypsy Rose

Right, "Sing, Sing" seems to have developed the theme of Burlesque Strippers.

Christina is a model / porno actress who is ver close to being a stripper,
Her maiden name was Rose and thats where the Gypsy Rose link first appears.
Also (as i was serching for a title) I looked up onto my CD rack and just
plucked hte first thing i saw (Which was "Sing,Sing.Death, House" by The Distillers)
and they have a song about Gypsy Rose. Freaky Weird


"Gypsy Rose Lee"
>
> When I see you lay down
> Under
> Pink lacquered skies
> Baby,
> I'll give you something
> That'll shut your eyes
> To this mess
>
> When I love you baby
> I mean it more than
> just the whole world
> And when,
> I take a picture
> thats instant
> Lost tonight
> oh baby it burns
>
> I said
> I remember it so
> I saw your eyes
> Go through the tunnel
> and I remember
> Australian sun
> I was eight years old
> You were Marilyn Monroe
>
> oh ya gotta take it
> oh yeah take it on
> playing backyard Blues
> blackheart stuck up in their jaw
> I can nail
> I'll nail this on
> Oh she ain't the whole world
>
> Break it down
>
> Oh I've tasted
> I tasted too
> too many nights
> Lost in space
> I remember
> kneeling down
> On my knees
> caught in the ground
>
> When I love you baby
> I mean it more than just
> the whole world
> And when
> saw gypsy rose
> Gypsy rose
> she rose to me
>
> I remember
> a rolling stone
> Oh rolling on down
> through your bones
> Oh ya gotta save,
> you gotta save your soul
> well She ain't
> the whole world
>
> When I love you baby
> I mean it more than just
> the whole world
> And when
> saw gypsy rose
> Gypsy rose
> she rose to me Baby
>
> I love you baby
> I mean it more than just
> the whole world
> And well
> when I know your sin
> I know your sin
> I know your wings

I woke up this morning thinking about Dan...

...which is really weird 'cos I havent thought about him in absolutly ages. I wasn't thinking about Dan now... I was thinking about Dan when we were kids. I met him when I was about 14 and I suppose he really was the first companion I had who's real drive in life was to lead me astray...
Anyway, it took me back, and made me think about "The Colour of Magic" (a story I wrote that got placed in the Leicester Libraries competition) because Doogie Buchanon in that peice really is (slightly) based on Dan. Defo not in appearence or in mannerism or speach, but there is a bit of Dan in there. And then that got me thinkning about characters and how the my work.
Well Dan and I moved into a squat together when I was probally about 16. There were 6 of us in total and we really were "the people to know" back in 1997! hehe! so long ago now! and it really got me thinking about the people i lived with, what they are doing now and how it would make a great basis for a peice of writing... weirdly enough we always said that one of us should write about our times in the squat - even when we were living there! Its a fantastic bit to scribble down because truth is ALWAYS stranger than fiction!
the characters: well, there was me, Dan, Kez (the youngest out of us all - she was a runaway from York), Phil (very strange boy - kept getting meningitus and liked throwing kinives at...) Helen (stunty punk smellen! she turned up on my doorstep last year and stayed over the night - not before going to the toilet on my landing might I add!) and Mike (who was lovely but really very strange and tried to communicate with his eyes for a week). I think I really need to get to the key of these people - treat them as characters and mix in a lot of fiction. When I've done that I've got a killer story! I just know it!!!!

PS: this is not Dan. Its my mate Steve who is a bit like him.

Sing,Sing Death House

Fuck me! I really need to get a better title for my play... its only got this title 'cos I looked up at my CD rack and that was the first album I saw and I needed a title for Momentum and everyone else had titles, titles before they'd even written the plays, I'm sure!
Anyway - I'm rewriting and have discovered the diference between rewriting and redrafting!
1. Redrafting is where you go through and nitpic little bits
2. Rewriting is exactly what it says on the tin. you keep your characters, situation and drive of the scene and rewrite it on to seprate paper / document.
and now I have reached "The Zone" (hehehe) ie, I actually feel like I have connected with the peice and feel that I can actually do what I do best and that's shout at everyone and play music really loud, not eat or sleep for 2 days, I sit up and write as everyone tries to tempt me to the pub with offers of free pints.
Anway... For once its going well!

I was very sick last night...

After the Momentum festival it kinda gave me the courage (is that the right word?) to have a pop at redrafting "Sing, Sing" so I did a 2 day redraft session and took it to a workshop on sunday to read it aloud and see where things are going wrong.
Anyway - it did help, but a bit of me thought I perhaps shouldnt have bothered as i got the whole "ripple" effect again where everybody erupts and begins arguing... I wasnt really quite sure why, but my play defo had something to do with it and they all started rowing about it and stuff. it felt a bit like when your a kid and your parents argue and your stuck in the middle wanting them to stop...
and now I'm an adult i did the most adult thing I could do to take control of the situation and got very pissed and shitfaced-ly drunk!
Hense... I was sick last night. I had a second peice to read, a peice of prose which I got some other guys to read out for me and the nervousness of something read combined with the booze made me throw up. friend of mine tried to be "gentlemanly" and hold my dreads out of my face but he failed and I got quite upset that one stank of vomit and tried to clean it with hand soap i n the bathroom (big mistake)
Anyway - I know i should be proud that what I write gets people talking but a lot of me wishes that It was just entertainment... I wouldnt get so nervous then!
On the plus side i got to hear Lucy's play "youths" which I really, genuinely loved and annother one called "gods" which seems so different form stuff the guy usually writes... so much better!!!

New (stolen) Story

Right I am now buzzing an idea arround my head about 2 out of work actors one of which is crap with girls who gets together with a playwrite who hates everyone.
Its just in images at the moment and i have an image of an aftershow party in the theatre, on the stage... the type of civilised thing that has a buffet... and my characters sat in the stalls griping and sniping at everyone!
then annother image of my min female protagonist in a terrible victoriana style dress (the type of thing i may be hunting charity shops to find now as you never do get floor length dresses with sleves anymore!)
and everyting from the other actors POV (or prehaps too withnial and I)
anyway - its in stages in my head!!!

The Momentum Festival

Well, it is a very 2 tiered society. I feel absolutly knackered after being at the momentum festival for most of the week... its still going on but I'm just not "hardcore Litrature" enough to continue... it's weird 'cos I swear I was less knackered after going to Download... yes, thats right the real rock festival! Momentum has worn me out more!
firstly, Its such a lot to take in. All the workshops, all the plays and readings, you just get home and feel like your brian needs a defragmenter programme running through it just so you can relax. I didnt get my play read out. i wonder why? perhaps becasue it was one of those things done in the ancient greek / roman traditions (or maybe it was just absolutly full of incest and peodophillia and rape and bad language and aborted feotuses and the audience of old wifeys that have nothing better to do would be a bit freaked out... hehe!) Anyway - one of the things I learned was how to restructure my play (rewrites in 2 days and a workshop on Sunday) and I got to seea really good reading, play called "Silence" by Ivar Waldemarson which was just brilliant and (personally I thought, but I have a weird attitude towards theatre) I reconed was probally better than teh Earl of Mo'Bay.
Anyway this whole 2 tiered society thing... some of the resident writers there (me being one of them) were so poor and I mean REALLY poor that we were rathering to walk to Beeston and pile our bus fare to nottingham together just to buy food. Its like communist Russia for writers, absolutly terrible. We had had little sleep from the dreadfully intense itenary, no food, hearded arround like cattle... made me so mad. some writers however had accomodation and little stickers on their name tags with "playwrite" on them... Just goes to show howfar licking arses will get you...

the restructure shuffle!

Right - as I have been led to believe - the mid stage of redrafting lays with character and plot! So what I am now doing is cutting characters, polishing some up and even inventing some new ones! Arthur now has a "nice" mirrored versoin of himself called Oscar - Oscar was his old best mate from school - a posh boy who wasnt so innanely fucked up and a physical remider of what Arthur could have been. Oscar may fall for Mary in a juxposition way, I'm not quite sure.
and Mary herself has gained a bit of a backstory - she was badly dumped and went off the rails a bit - thats why she is so strange and fucked up! she has real problems admiting that she is actually quite upset and it manifests itself in stange devient behaviour! there is another character, Charisse (told you I would bend to your wishes and get you in there dear!) Charisse is a graduate - one of my narrators university friends who is immaculate in prada and vesache - but quite hard and aggressive as well! she breexes in and out of the characters lives and my new opening chapter begins with her. she shows how easy it is to get wrapped up in one your life as she is the pepetual outsider POV
Emily has become more different - she is an extreeme sports fanatic who loves punk! All I really know about her at the moment is that she was out surfing, landed on her head, got 7 stapes and went back into the water to finish off the wave! She's nuts! I may change her name.
Then there is my Narrator - I have actually given her a name and backstory! I never bothered before saying that i didnt want to pinpoint her blah,blah, but really I am just lazy her name is Jocasta for the moment and she is quarter french, quarter barbadian and half chinese! a real ethnic mixbag!

Charisma

I now have a very real problem of creating a character with perfect charisma! I've actually done it! and now I find it very difficult to write about any other characters in the damned novel!!! Arthur is my perfectly developed character and every exchange i write about other characters leads back to him in some way or annother... its really very annoying!Hes a really ugly, tall gangly like creature thats pompus and arogant and manipulative and slightly sinister, but he is also really quite likeable... in a manipulative "little-boy-lost" way for most other characters... or is he really?
His attitudes and lifestyle are a mirror of the regression theme in the novel - he symbolises what the narrator really wants but socially (and due to her own neuroses) she cant embrace fully. He's like the ID (Freudian psychoanalysis) to her ego... perhaps i should invent a superego character? Maybe that is where it goes all wrong???

Character Cutting

In real harsh writer terms I am now cutting characters from the Novel. Emily is really not needed as annother female character, Mary is wayyyyyy more developed and more juxposed to my two main characters, and I was thinking of inventing annother character called Oscar- who to be fair is a "nice" version of Arthur, he and Mary could get together! Highlight annother way that relationships between classes and race could come about.
Anyway - been developing the "tool" characters that were innitially in the book just to spurn on the plot - namely Terry the dealer and Judy Arthurs girlfriend.
Well.. all that and sleeping and eating chinese takeaway!